


On the Strangest Sea

by dogroses



Category: Dragon Age - All Media Types, Dragon Age II
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Canon-Typical Violence, Enemies to Friends to Lovers, Eventual Romance, Eventual Smut, F/M, Hurt/Comfort, Mage Rights, Mentions of Cancer, Modern Girl in Thedas, OC doesn't know Dragon Age, Purple Hawke, Slow Build, Slow Burn, Survival
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-01-21
Updated: 2019-09-18
Packaged: 2019-10-13 17:10:47
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 4
Words: 17,144
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17491958
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dogroses/pseuds/dogroses
Summary: Bea wakes up in a dirty medieval dump called Kirkwall with no clue how or why she arrived. By luck more than skill, she lives long enough to find a job but chafes (literally) at the life of endless drudgery she's made for herself. With no way to return to the creature comforts of the 21st Century, she'll probably work until her violent and premature death. Unless, perhaps, she befriends a group—gang, really—of some of the most dangerous people in Kirkwall. But, between the criminal activity and the actual magic, staying away from Hawke might be the safer choice.





	1. A Kindness of Strangers

**Author's Note:**

> title from a poem by Emily Dickinson :)

I drifted. 

Somewhere far below, I felt my body lying limp and heavy, but I felt no reason to move. After an immeasurable period of time, pinpricks of discomfort dragged me all the way down to my body. Stinging points of grit and gravel pressed into my bare arms and face. I was lying on the ground. I opened my eyes and a dimly lit room resolved into focus. The wall was roughly hewn, made of stone and dirt and held up by wooden beams. Lit by torchlight. I blinked. 

You know sometimes when you’re on holiday you wake up in a strange bed completely disoriented? When your mind goes blank for a whole minute before you remember where you are? I was having that feeling. But this wasn’t a hotel or someone’s living room, this was a damp, muddy cave.

Someone poked at my ear. The fingers fumbled and then began to pull at my earring with intent. With effort, I rolled over and levered myself upright. It was a child, not more than ten, covered in grime and crusted dirt. As I stared his eyes widened and he yanked at the silver stud. 

“Hey—” I yelped and the back of the stud gave way. Prize grasped in his fist, the kid scarpered. “What the hell?” 

Ow. It wasn’t even a nice earring; it was from one of those cheap sets of studs idly picked up because I kept misplacing matching pairs. I flexed numb fingers and patted my ear to make sure it wasn’t bleeding. 

Sitting up hadn’t made my surroundings any more familiar. Even the smell—the must of dirt and rot and distant smoke on the breeze—didn’t spark my memory. I sat dumbly, fingers carding through the dirt. When had I—? How had I—? I didn’t remember falling asleep. Worse, I couldn’t recall my most recent memory. Had it been that conversation in the garden with Aggy? I’d been in for treatment recently, at least I thought I had.

I stood, so slowly I might as well have creaked with the movement, steadying myself for the usual wave of lightheadedness. There was nothing, all the blood remained in the appropriate places. No nausea either. My arms and legs were stiff but not heavy with exhaustion. 

That was all well and good, but there remained the question of my current location. Bit of a downer. I patted the various pockets of my leggings and then, with increasing desperation, my bra. Fuck. No phone. Feeling exposed in the middle of the room, I hobbled over to lean against the wall. I wasn’t even wearing shoes, just socks, leggings and a t-shirt. The socks were clean, so I hadn’t walked here myself. Unless there was a happy shoe thief nearby. 

The space was more like a passage than a room. I hadn’t seen where the child had vanished, but there were options—paths going behind and before me, even a rickety ladder up to a grate in the uneven ceiling. 

I needed to orient myself. Find a safe place or person and a phone to use. The child had gone somewhere, somewhere with people. At this point, I didn’t care if they wanted my other earring and my watch too, so long as I could use their phone. 

I picked the direction that had more lighting and began to walk briskly up the path. I passed through a door and the passage continued, much the same, just dirt, wood and rubble. The path was well-trod, packed down with use. I wasn’t in the middle of nowhere at least. 

As I walked I grew cold. It was the damp, clammy kind of cold and the chill cut right through my light clothes. My lack of shoes also meant I to go slow around sharp rashes of gravel and oozy puddles of questionable origin. My socks stiffened with dirt and my feet felt raw. I didn’t dare look because, honestly, what was I going to do about it, anyway? 

 

After walking for a while, I thought to mark the time on my watch and about fifteen minutes after that the passage began to change. More torches and lanterns marked my way and litter piled up in every spare corner—broken crates, rusted metal, once what looked like a minecart turned on its side. Civilisation was close. 

The path narrowed and, suddenly aware of my vulnerability, I crept out into a large cavern. My total view was obstructed by huge pillars and ramshackle multi-story structures, but if I had to guess size I would have said big. Really big. 

It looked like—nothing. Nothing I’d ever seen before. 

The cave was full of people. A number of them passed below where I stood at the top of rickety steps, their heads down and walking with purpose. The area looked rough, so that made sense. Other people gathered around makeshift braziers, hands held out to cut the chill. Others clustered at leaning, dirty market stalls. It was a settlement of some sort. 

Someone screamed in the far distance, a proper full-throated sound of terror. I flinched, crouching low and curling my fingers around the spiked fencing. To my surprise, nobody else reacted with the very real alarm I thought this warranted. A couple cocked heads or leaned to peer around corners or over edges. Nobody whipped out a phone to call the police or start filming. 

When there wasn’t more sound other than echoing clamour of the settlement—conversing, yelling, barking—I unfurled from my crouch. 

What was this place? How could I leave as soon as possible? 

I tiptoed down the steps, trying to examine people without catching their gaze. They were all, almost uniformly, ragged and dirty. Quite literally, their clothes looked like rags, uneven, poorly made, rough to touch. Age and physical appearance varied and some had obvious injuries or illnesses. One reclining man had skin the particular sallow-pale shade of the very ill. I choked down a surge of empathy and kept on. 

What I needed was a landmark—a street-sign, a store, a bloody map with one of those You-Are-Here markers. There was nothing, just makeshift market stalls and rusting detritus that looked like the age-old leftovers of some industrial—mining?—enterprise. I scurried down the packed earth path through the market, arms held up like a nervous t-rex, hurrying as if I had somewhere to go.

On the other side the open space fractured into a meandering mess. There were stairs down, stairs up and well-trod paths that vanished into fissures in the rock wall. A veritable warren of options. I felt the hitching start of a panicked breath. Which looked most likely to lead to civilisation? Before I could work myself up into a proper meltdown, someone shouted behind me. I whipped around, half-imagining I’d see the same apathetic reaction from earlier. 

This was different. Two people ran past me, one woman knocking my shoulder hard enough to stagger me. I sank down again, shifting to a smaller silhouette like it might help. The open market was chaos, with people running in all directions. 

At the centre of this vortex stood a group of armoured people, their figures catching the eye for their air of complete ease. By their manner, they could have been taking a casual afternoon stroll through a park, or a Renaissance Fair. They were dressed like actual knights. Dirty, run-down, leather-wearing knights, but actual knights complete with swords and shields. Several of them grappled with the ragged people. One man was trapped against the ground with an armoured knee in his back, another was pinned arms to shoulders in gauntleted hands. Another, a child, thrashed with raw desperation, scream muffled by a hand. 

It felt unreal. My brain catalogued the actions and stalled like a broken record, refusing to understand what was happening. 

What—? What—? 

My chest ached and my breath rasped in my mouth. Someone should help those people. I remained rooted to the spot, half-crouched. I felt like a prey animal, heaving with terror but fixed in place. I became aware of my bladder suddenly and desperately clenched my thighs together. 

Swords were so violent, I’d just realised. They looked like well-used swords, hefted with purpose, so long and heavy and—lethal. What would it feel like, the stabbing, the slicing, the dismembering? Would you have long enough to feel it if they took your head off? 

I was stuck in this loop when a hand closed around my arm. I jerked so hard I overbalanced, but when I turned around it was only a girl. She looked a little younger than me, early twenties perhaps, but with dark circles under her eyes and lank hair pulled back under a kerchief. Her face was fixed in the same wide-eyed rictus of fear that I imagined I was wearing. 

“Slavers,” she hissed and tugged me with her down the stairs. 

We rattled down the stairs. I was glad of the hold she kept on my wrist, otherwise I’d have gone down headfirst. She deftly took us around several identical corners and we emerged into another open space, her hip bumping my own as we staggered to a stop. She belatedly dropped her hand from my wrist. 

I turned on my heels, trying to see in all directions. There was no sign of the slavers or even of the panic and disruption. Again, it was like nothing had happened. 

“I—” I looked back to my companion, with as many thanks as questions, but she was already several steps away, walking quickly. Well, thank you? 

I shivered, probably from the fear as much as the cold. It was cooler down here. For good reason, I could see, now I’d taken a breath, that the cave opened out into fresh, if foggy, air. On the breeze, cutting through the smell of rot and sewage was the clear salt smell of the ocean. I couldn’t see the drop from here but we must have been standing in a cliff that met the sea below. 

I took a deep breath of salt and seaweed, wanting to grin like a madwoman. I wasn’t dead. I hadn’t been caught by human traffickers. Things were looking up. 

 

The bloom of euphoria didn’t last. 

Noting wary glances, I started walking down towards the sea. At the first staircase, stopped to take a breath, I tried to check the time and found nothing. My watch was—she’d taken my watch. I almost laughed. Of course she’d taken my watch, why else stop to help a stranger unless you’d glimpsed an opportunity to steal something shiny? Damn this place and all these people.

When I reached the cave mouth I stopped at the spiked fence, peering over the edge without resting all my weight on it. There was nothing. It was just an edge, a drop that disappeared into fog. If I cocked my head I could hear the distant crash of waves. There were hulking shapes, other cliffs or buildings, almost visible through the mist. No stairs down, no path out. 

 

Some time passed. I’m not sure how much. My mood continued to yo-yo between rage and terror. I felt at a loss. Even when I tried to lay the situation out logically, I stalled. If I didn’t know how I got here, how could I get out? This was so far out of my league. 

“Well, you're not a local, that's for sure.” 

I jumped. The speaker was a tall woman in an oiled greatcoat with a bright blue bandana over her dark hair. She wore heavy gold jewellery at her throat and ears. 

“Yes,” she tapped the gold piercing between lip and chin, as if in thought, “you’re too clean.”

I looked down. I certainly didn’t feel clean. But she was right, my grey t-shirt was, well, a brighter shade than the local dress. 

“Lost?” Her eyebrow arched, lips turned up, inviting me to confide in her. Like it was a harmless secret, something we could laugh about together. I hesitated. Slavers. She didn’t look like the others, but… God, I had to take a gamble on someone, didn’t I? I needed to know more than I currently did. 

“Yeah, I guess I am, a little.”

“Looking for the the clinic?” 

My ears might as well have perked up. A clinic? Like a medical clinic? Surely a clinic had phones and authorities. 

I nodded. 

“Ah,” she relaxed a fraction. “I heard the rumours as well. Honestly, I thought you might know about it yourself. You look … different.” 

“I’m afraid I know very little.” The urge to giggle rose up my throat. 

“Ha,” she leaned back, her coat opening to reveal corseted cleavage and two long daggers hilted at her hips. “Well, I say knowing things is overrated.” 

That’s how you got to keep your valuables around here. Very, very big daggers. I hastily dragged my eyes away but her little smile said she noticed. 

“There’s one last bolthole I wanted to check,” her gaze shifted away, focused on something mid-distance. “Come along if you like.”

She didn’t give me time to mull this over, pushing off the pillar and walking away. Was that supposed to lower my guard? To seem like she didn’t really care if I came or not? 

My legs had gone stiff and protested greatly as I jumped up. Following her was better than waiting to die here. I wasn’t sure if she even noticed, but despite her confident stride, she never seemed to get too far ahead. 

 

She stopped at the other end of the cliff’s edge at a crooked, wooden door. An unlit lantern hung above us. I looked once and looked back, not even sure why it caught my eye. It wasn’t shiny, exactly, it was old and battered but clean—like it was well-used. 

“This looks promising,” with her hand at her hip, she peered through the gap where the door didn't meet the frame. I held my breath, ready to bolt. She pushed the door open and passed over the threshold. 

I peered around her, noting several people within. 

“Heard there’s a mage healer around these parts,” she said to them, all cocked hip and confidence. 

Numbly, I followed her, found a crate and sat down like my strings had been cut. 

This wasn’t a clinic, it was a hovel. What stood out suddenly—even more than the general stench—was that there wasn’t a scrap of plastic in the whole room. Not even a battered tarpaulin or discarded food wrapper. The only litter was splintered wood and shredded cloth and mud. Or human refuse. Probably the latter. 

“What do you mean he’s not here?” my companion complained. 

“Are you ill or injured?” one of the clinic-hovel women had appeared beside me. I startled at being spoken to and shook my head. 

“I’m—can I borrow your—” I searched for the word, suddenly blank, “—phone?”

There was no way this place had a phone. 

The helper cocked her head. “What?”

“Your telephone?” I tried, heart sinking. 

“I don’t know what you mean.”

Across the room, the woman with the bandana had discarded her coat and was unwrapping a bandage high on her arm. A clinic helper inspected a ugly slash, swollen and oozing, which ran the length of her bicep and began applying a muddy sort of poultice. That did not look sanitary. 

“Can you stand, please?” the helper asked. I did, almost reflexively submitting to the treatment. The woman began to inspect me, patting gently down my arms and scanning my face for pain. 

“I’m not hurt.” I insisted again and after more patting the helper took me at my word. 

“Have you come for herbs?” she asked. 

My rescuer was shrugging her coat back on. I did not want to go back out there. Fortunately, I didn’t have to make a choice, she left without looking back. 

“Where am I?” I asked, turning back to the helper. I hoped with all my heart for someplace I’d heard of. Maybe this was just some weird cult out in a cave in the bush somewhere? 

“Darktown,” at my blank look she tried again, “the Undercity? Below Kirkwall?”

Darktown? The Undercity? Could there have been a worse answer? Seriously, was I dead? Sure, there was the whole cancer thing, but my chances were great! I was responding to treatment! I didn’t even remember it and death seemed like something you’d remember. Shouldn’t there be a greeting before they booted you off to whatever circle of hell you deserved? Bit of an introduction or an information session? 

“Did you die?” I asked and when the woman recoiled, continued hastily, “I mean, do you remember dying? In another life? Another place?”

“No,” she said, her eyes wide. Then she dropped her gaze like I might start shrieking and foaming at the mouth. Fair enough, I supposed. 

 

They avoided me after that, only occasionally sneaking glances during their various chores. After a while a young boy gave me a glazed cup of murky water. I examined his face for any sign of humour. Was this a joke? The water was so brown it had almost stopped being transparent. There wasn’t even a flicker of mischief in his downcast eyes. 

The water didn’t smell like rot or sewage, just of dirt—though you probably couldn’t smell Typhoid. After a few agonising minutes, I sipped it. It tasted dusty but was deliciously wet. I drank half. 

Dead people didn’t get sick, so if this _was_ some kind of hellish afterlife, I’d be fine. Right? 

“Hana has offered to take you up to Lirene’s in Lowtown, girl.” One of the older women tossed some cloth at my feet. 

I picked it up and untangled it to reveal a pair of rectangular sandal-like shoes. The soles were woven like a basket and the upper was made of a stiff canvas cloth to which was fixed long ties. Brushing dirt off my socks, I slipped them on and wrapped the ties around my ankles, tightly enough to make up for the fact that soles were large and unwieldy. It worked surprisingly well. 

“Thanks,” I said, belatedly. The woman shrugged. 

 

Hana was quick on her feet. I hadn’t walked this much in years and all my muscles wanted to let me know. She waited for me, all but tapping her foot, before we made our way through narrow alleys lined with shanty homes. After catching a glimmer of watching eyes through the flapping doors and windows, I understood why. 

The Undercity was apparently an entirely literal name, so our journey involved a lot of stairs. The light faded as we went and when we drew up out of the cavern my first glimpse of proper sky was orange fading to bruised purple. 

Up here the buildings were actual buildings. They were tall and blocky, made of something like sandstone, with windows guarded by rusting metal spikes. 

Very welcoming. 

There wasn’t any normal 21st Century stuff. I searched for anything—vehicles, street signs, ads—there was nothing. Even the graffiti was incomprehensible, just monotone scrawls and strange figures in red and black. After starting, my brain couldn’t stop. No power cables, no proper roads—not a single screen—no street lights, not even any glass-fronted stores. All the colours looked muddied and muted. 

Time travel? But I couldn’t place when or where. Medieval, maybe, but the country? No idea. Afterlife or extended hallucination were starting to look like the logical options. 

Hana picked her way through a series of alleyways and stopped in front of double doors set low in a towering sandstone block. The doors were painted with a jagged symbol that, if you squinted at it sideways, looked like a weird bird. 

“Here,” she nodded towards the doors. “Lirene’s. Looks after Fereldans.” 

Then she left. I took two steps after her before I could stop myself. 

The streets had emptied quickly as dusk fell and only one or two people loitered in shadowed corners, the street quiet enough for a mumble of their conversation to carry on the breeze. I shivered. My mind felt blurred and my thoughts moved at a trudge. Maybe I should have stayed at the Clinic, because even though this area was marginally cleaner, I had no idea what to expect of Lirene’s. 

 

Lirene’s was nicer than the Clinic, with swept wooden floorboards underfoot, a high ceiling and brass lanterns. Every spare corner of the place was piled up with crates. It was all worn, but clean. 

Absorbed by my gaping, it took me a moment to notice the people. Not in this room but the next, the buzz of many people speaking below conversational level. A child cried out and was shushed. Behind a makeshift counter propped up on crates, a woman wearing a belted gray-green dress watched me with a still expression. She didn’t seem particularly welcoming, but she hadn’t insisted I leave yet.

“Hello,” I started, and realised I had no idea what to say next. 

“What do you want?” she asked, still poised. I wondered if she had some sort of weapon ready to whip out at any moment, it was that kind of posture.

“I—er, shelter?” The Clinic seemed to think I’d get help here, they must have had a reason.

She sighed, her shoulders dropping. “You’re not the only one, girl. Where are you from? I can’t place the accent.”

I stopped, caught. In the interest of not being burned at the stake for witchcraft, I probably shouldn’t come out with the whole story—though I couldn’t even begin to tell it myself. 

“I don’t know,” I blurted, conscious of my ongoing hesitation. What was the next best thing? “I can’t remember.” 

A frown pinched her eyebrows. “What do you mean?” 

Were you supposed to maintain eye contact while lying or was that a giveaway? I crossed my hands over my chest, clutching at opposite elbows. 

“I don’t have any memories. I’m not sure where I came from,” I looked at her as long as I could, breaking her steady gaze to look at the floor. It was sort of true and I was as miserable as I sounded, that was real. “The Clinic thought you might help me.”

Her lips pursed. I snuck a glimpse of her face, trying not to be obvious. Did she believe me?

“Ah, well, you sound,” she cocked her head in thought, “almost Fereldan. Not a very well thought out scam, is it? Did you think we just took in every girl with braids in her hair?”

Oh. My hand floated up to touch the end of my sleeping braid as if of its own accord. 

“I’m sorry,” I choked out, turning to go. 

A sound made me stop. A short laugh. Something in me dared to hope. I turned and she was smiling, a tiny rueful twist of her lips. 

“So poorly thought out I’m almost inclined to believe you,” she said. “Perhaps you’re a refugee, perhaps not. I can put you in the boarding house for one week, after that it’s three silver every week, no credit. If I hear a whisper of trouble you’re out.” 

“Thank you.” Tears pricked at my eyes. I felt so tired, all at once, as if this small victory had used up all the fight I had left. 

“Don’t thank me. When you find work you’ll remember this.”


	2. Lowtown Manners

I didn’t have the luxury of confusion when I woke the next morning. I’d slept in bursts and every time I opened my eyes it was with deep disappointment to find myself still in Kirkwall. 

I’d been assigned a cot in a crowded dormitory, elbow to elbow with other refugees. Last night, I’d exchanged a bare minimum of pleasantries with these roommates, then I’d yanked my threadbare blanket up to my chin, squeezed my eyes shut and tried to return home by sheer force of will. 

The accommodation, though free, left something to be desired. My review would have been … critical. The boarded-up windows let in a draft, there were ten people too many in the room and there was a vague but alarmingly persistent odour. And that didn’t even cover the ‘toilet’ facilities. 

When the grey dawn filtered through the boarded window, the refugees began to wake and move about. I pulled my blanket up. If I kept my eyes closed it was almost like this wasn’t happening. The fussing of one of the younger children rose to a wail. The mumble of conversation rose in volume to compete with the child. My empty stomach rolled and growled. 

I gave up and opened my eyes. This early, the room was rendered in dark grey. The dim shapes of the other refugees attended to various parts of their morning routines; dressing, brushing, one wetting a rag in a bucket of water to rinse her face. 

I stood and felt around the bottom of the cot to find my own dress. Before I’d been bundled out the door of Lirene’s shop, in a perfunctory way that was kind in its understatement, she’d piled two things into my arms—a worn blanket and a scratchy brown dress. Even including this charity, the list of all my worldly possessions was laughably brief—blanket, dress, socks, canvas sandals, t-shirt, leggings, underclothes and a single earring. I’d tucked the earring into my bra overnight to prevent nighttime thievery. I wasn’t going to make that mistake again.

I found the dress and, holding it gingerly at safe distance, tried to assess the cleanliness. It smelled neutral, faintly acrid, but with no real trace of its previous owner. With my t-shirt and leggings still on, I pulled it over my head. After I negotiated it over my shoulders, it fell like a sack to mid-calf. I looked down at myself and sighed. At least I’d blend in with the locals.

The girl washing her face was perched on a cot one over from mine. Short, with cropped dark hair, she’d introduced herself last night but I couldn’t remember her name. 

“Hi,” I said, glad that the others were occupied. “Where did—is there any more water?” 

Her eyes were dark. She held my gaze and I fought the urge to squirm. 

“You want to use my wash water?” she said, with the even, sort-of-English accent which I conspicuously lacked. “Or perhaps you’d like me to fetch some for you?” The twist to her mouth said this offer was a trap. 

“I was just wondering where I could get some,” I said quickly, conscious of how weird and elongated my Australian accent sounded in comparison. 

She laughed. “Oh, don’t blush, I’m teasing you.” Her eyes made another sweep of my sagging dress, pausing where my rumpled t-shirt crested the neckline. “You are new, aren’t you?”

“I guess I am,” I adjusted the dress over my hips, hands catching on the lumps and imperfections in the handspun fabric. This was beginning to feel distinctly reminiscent of my first day of high school. 

“There’s a common pump outside,” another woman interjected, with a smile. The soft tone didn’t make me feel like less of a child, but I wasn’t in a position to object to any kindness. I remembered this one. Talyn, from a neighbouring bed. She’d started introductions last night. 

“I was going to tell her that,” the first girl said, grinning, “eventually.” Her name was Seesh, I learned, during their ensuing back and forth. 

While we were lying in our cots last night, Talyn told me she’d lost her family to blight and had come by ship to Kirkwall in the summer. 

Whatever blight was remained a mystery. A vague memory of history class or wikipedia article brought potato blight to mind. Crop failure and famine? Whatever it was, it'd sent refugees flooding into Kirkwall. And, lost and foreign as I was, I’d been easily mistaken for a very new one. The deception was convenient, but in the face of Talyn’s real hardship, I felt cold. I hadn’t offered my tall tale of amnesia in return and she hadn’t pressed me. 

“Do you want to come with us?” Talyn asked when we’d finished dressing. Seesh lingered on the threshold. 

“Sure,” I agreed, trying not to sound over-eager. As they went out the door, I patted down the bed to make sure I hadn’t left anything. I was wearing everything I owned, I realised. Everything but the blanket. 

 

When I emerged into the sunlit morning, Seesh was exchanging words with a woman in a pale blue dress. I admired the dress, with its neat weave and even colour. It was of far finer make than my potato sack and, honestly, most of the clothes I’d seen so far. 

“—oh, of course, you’ll have missed introductions while you were out all night,” Seesh said, as we approached. 

Was this a little roommate ribbing over a long night of partying and walk of shame? Some things were constant, it seemed. 

The other woman didn’t immediately reply. Her expression tightened—not the long-suffering amusement I’d expected for a bit of gentle banter. 

“Seesh,” Talyn said softly. 

The moment broke and the woman looked away. 

“I’m Else,” she said to me. 

“Bea.” It’s Beata, really, but like my similarly afflicted sister, Agnes, I prefered the short version. I offered my hand without thinking. 

She took my hand but didn’t shake it, her smile deepening. Oh dear, maybe shaking hands wasn’t the done thing. I squeezed her hand in a facsimile of a handshake and dropped it. 

“We’ve got to get on, Else,” Talyn said. “Starving.” 

“Of course,” she smiled at me and Talyn and went into the building behind us. So, she lived at the boarding house. Well, maybe they were sick of living in each others’ pockets. 

 

We stopped at the water well. In this area—which I discovered was named, only slightly less ominously, Lowtown—the water ran pale grey. I splashed the grime and dust off my face and drank to take the edge off my hunger. 

I trailed behind Seesh and Talyn as they wove their way through the morning pedestrian commute. Lowtown bustled by daylight. The once-quiet squares overflowed with fabric-shaded market stalls and the smell of smoke and food layered over the stink of sewage. 

I gaped like a tourist. It was so detailed. With the sheer variation in people and costume and things, it was like walking through an ultra-high budget historical movie set. It was, in short, cool as fuck. 

When we arrived at the Lowtown Bazaar, Seesh left to buy food. Talyn and I joined a group of fellow refugees standing in the shade of some steps. 

Absently, I reached for my pocket but my hand slipped along the totally pocketless dress. The phone I’d been reaching for didn’t exist. Come to think of it, neither did the chapstick or the tissues. Or the wallet—and that was going to be a problem.

And what was I supposed to do now, talk to other people? I cast an uneasy glance at Talyn, who was making cheerful, determined conversation with an uninterested beggar woman. No, thanks. 

Seesh soon returned, hands occupied with flatbread topped with a savoury filling. I tried to sniff unobtrusively. Mmm, fried onions. The bread, which was rapidly disappearing, had perfect spots of char on the underside. 

“Food’s cheap if you have any coin,” Seesh said, as she licked the grease from her fingers. 

If only for the small matter of money. Well, if my ramble through Darktown had taught me anything it was the relative value of my cheap modern possessions. If they were worth stealing, perhaps someone might be convinced to part with money for them. But I wasn’t in a hurry to tell Seesh about the earring I still had tucked into my bra. Not after yesterday. 

I’d hesitated too long. 

“No coin, really?” she raised her eyebrows. “Sold everything to make passage?”

“I don’t—” The fake amnesia thing was going to come up eventually. I still didn’t know enough about Ferelden to make up anything else. “I’m not sure, I ... lost my memories somehow.” 

“What, like, with a bump on the head?” 

Talyn turned towards us, her attention caught by Seesh’s intrigue. 

“Yeah, I guess,” I fiddled with my sleeve. “I’m not sure.” 

“So you don’t remember where you came from?” Talyn drew closer. “I wondered why you wouldn’t say.”

“No.” I looked between them and their almost identical frowns. Seesh dropped my gaze as our eyes met. 

“Sounds like blood magic,” she said, looking at the dirt, her voice low. 

Talyn turned on her. “Maker, Seesh, don’t say that!” 

“Well, it does! Mages can do that, you know,” Seesh insisted, her eyes wide. Her body was stiff with fright. Was this superstition? Something religious? 

“I don’t know what happened,” I said, sounding feeble even to my own ears. 

Talyn reached out and took my hand. At first, I thought she might try some ritual but then I saw the difference. Her hand was rough and reddened where my own, despite the warm undertone to my skin, was pale and soft. 

“With hands like that, someone’s looking for you.” The twist of her mouth carved deep lines in her otherwise pleasant face. 

“I hope so,” I said but wasn’t sure I meant it. Had I disappeared out of thin air? Maybe this was a hallucination and I was safe in hospital, sans mind. Maybe I really was dead. Though, you’d think, being dead, that I’d be free of certain mortal concerns. Like the gnawing hunger, or the sore legs, or the need to use the awful outhouses. 

Talyn nodded and let my hand go. “I hope so too.” 

Seesh hovered, eyes wary, but she wasn’t crossing herself or warding me off. Small victories. I took a deep breath. These two were my only allies in the whole world. Some impulse to return the trust they’d given me made me open my mouth. 

“I do have one thing from before,” I turned away from the busy thoroughfare to reach a hand down the side of my bra. “This is all I have.” 

Fear forgotten, Seesh tugged my hand flat to inspect the earring. 

“Never seen a clasp like that,” she said, turning my hand, “looks alright though. Hightown?” The last was to Talyn, who’d leant over to look. 

Talyn nodded, “it’ll fetch a better price there.” 

 

Seesh departed to the docks to look for odd jobs, but Talyn had business in Hightown. Thank god, I’d lost my sense of the direction hours ago. Lowtown was a maze. 

Hightown—and I shouldn’t have been surprised by the literal name—sat upon a rocky hill, glittering gold and white in the mid-morning sun. As we made our way up the stairs, I caught glimpses of the greenery that Lowtown sorely lacked. In fact, it was unlike Lowtown and Darktown in all the best ways. The pavers were even, the brickwork was decorative and the neat courtyards had water fountains and ivy-covered trellises. Idle residents in rich clothing sat around making quiet conversation. If I absolutely had to live in this medieval dump, let it be here. 

Talyn directed me to a jewellery merchant and left. The stall was tucked into a shaded corner underneath a tree. The vendor knelt behind the bench, muttering to himself. 

“Yes?” he demanded after I’d lingered a while wondering how to get his attention. 

Oh—he wasn’t crouched or kneeling. He was short, shorter than me and I wasn’t tall. I hadn’t expected it, given the breadth of his shoulders, his proportions were unusual. I stopped myself staring by jerking my gaze down to the neat rows of rings and necklaces. 

“Are you buying jewellery?” I asked. 

“Ah,” he heaved a theatrical sigh. “What family heirloom or tin trinket am I to be subjected to today?”

“Er—” I held out the earring, palm up, and he plucked it right out of my hand. Undeterred my gasp, he tested the metal with his thumbnail. It seemed to pass this inspection. He pulled the clasp on and off, surprisingly deft with such large hands. 

“Well, it’s neat enough make. How about forty?” he said, eyeing me. 

Forty what? Oh fuck, I should have asked the others what a sensible offer would sound like. Lirene had mentioned silver, but I had no other information about the currency. He could give me pebbles off the ground and I couldn’t question it. 

“Forty?” I pressed, trying to sound cool. 

“Hm,” he stroked his free hand over his beard. “Come across from Ferelden?” 

I nodded. 

“Terrible business. A cousin of mine died to darkspawn, terrible.” 

Darkspawn. Blight related? I nodded again. Please tell me more. 

“You seem like good folk. Straight off the farm, if I’m right? Last of your family valuables—?” 

I kept nodding and he went on for a bit about his generosity and the rustic plainness of my meagre offering. Apparently, my time-travelling earring didn’t look like much up in Hightown. I tried to work up some outrage at his attempt at swindling me, but there was nothing. I just wanted money for food. 

“Thanks,” I said, when he paused for breath, sticking my hand out. 

The earring vanished and from a sack at his feet, he counted a small pile into my hand. The coins were of a coppery metal. Not uniform, some oval and some worn flat. Calling it coin was a stretch, but so long as it could get me a sandwich, I didn’t care. 

 

When I found Talyn again, she was bright-eyed with good news. 

“The Harriott family is looking for domestic help,” she said. I gathered by her manner that this was a big opportunity. I tried to match this enthusiasm with a smile and agreed to go with her to the estate. Why she wanted so badly to be a servant was beyond me. 

Outside the merchant district the buildings changed, with large, walled estates starting to line the street. We found the trade entrance of the Harriott estate tucked into an alley. Trees and flowering greenery peeked over the high white walls and their clean scent carried on the breeze. 

Talyn turned a critical eye upon my dress. I gritted my teeth, conscious of my limp hair and dusty hem. 

“Wait here,” she said, straightening her own tunic. Ouch.

A short, slender woman answered Talyn's knock. They didn’t talk long. Midway through the short exchange, Talyn’s shoulders dropped. 

I caught the tail-end of muttered profanity as she crossed back over the street. 

“They won’t even hire humans,” she said, her fists clenched. “The sodding elves take less pay.”

“Elves?” Was she being figurative? 

“This city is full of knife-ears,” she continued, unaffected by my confusion. “Maker’s breath, how is anyone supposed to get an honest job?”

I nodded, trying to affect a suitably disapproving expression. Elves? Like house elves? I wanted to laugh out loud, just to reassure myself that calling people elves was as silly as it sounded, but her stormcloud frown kept my mouth shut. 

 

My stomach grumbled all the way back to Lowtown. I wasn’t the only one going hungry, either. Some of the Lowtown residents were skinny to the point of starvation. Now the morning crowd had thinned, I had the opportunity to properly stare at people. One of these slender men, noting my gaze, stared back. His eyes bulged oddly from his angular face. I looked away hastily. 

Talyn’s odd statement kept returning to me. They won’t even hire _humans_. Elves could have been a slur, some slang for an ethnic group, but specifying oneself as human—that was odd. 

A woman cut across our path, head bowed. I caught a close look at her ears, long and flat and pointed. 

“Oh, shit,” I said. No. 

Talyn stopped in her tracks to match me. 

“That’s an elf?” I said and pointed at one of them, hoping she’d laugh outright. 

“Yes?” she said, head cocked. 

 

I got a meal—fried onions and lentils on flatbread, same as Seesh—and ate it in a haze. Elves _and_ dwarves. This was crazy. I was crazy. The more I thought about it the less it made sense. This wasn’t medieval. It wasn’t even on Earth. I needed an Aslan to come along and explain this shit to me. At least the Pevensies were told that they’d appeared in fantasyland for a reason. I got nothing. 

“Did you get a poor price?” Seesh said, upon her return that afternoon, noting my sprawled seat on the ground. 

Talyn explained my recent epiphanies in hushed tones. I expected more superstition about blood magic and memory, but Seesh scoffed. 

“Wait til you hear about the Qun,” she said. 

I wanted to put my hands over my ears, but I needed to know more. So I asked. 

 

The satiety of the greasy meal soon passed, leaving me to pick the grit of poorly milled flour out of my teeth. Soon after sunset, I tucked myself into bed at the boarding house thinking of cake, pastries, crisp salads and buttered white bread. A welcome distraction. At least my body had no time for this fantasyland nonsense, with its elves, dwarves and horned Qunari beasts. 

But, as I lay awake, all my other concerns assailed me. Food. Money for more food. Jobs. All the one thousand and one things I didn’t know that I didn’t know about Kirkwall and Ferelden. My fingers itched to google. _Kirkwall jobs. Cheap places to eat Kirkwall. Blight. Blight darkspawn Ferelden._

My literacy might be a rare skill here if there was any similarity to pre-industrial Earth. Perhaps I could be a scribe or a bookkeeper. My maths was dismal, but I could work on that. Better scribing than washing floors and emptying chamber pots in Hightown. 

 

Several days passed. 

The longer I stayed in Kirkwall the less the big questions mattered. _What is this place_ and _how did I get here_ became secondary to food, money and shelter. With my supply of copper dwindling and Lirene’s deadline looming, I spared no energy wondering about the fantasy creatures. 

My fourth day in Kirkwall struck a blow that cut through the monotony. 

Honest business in Lowtown concluded at sunset and after walking home we sat around and talked until turning in. With no other entertainment, we made our fun by venting all our daily complaints for mocking and sympathy. Seesh had carried messages all day and found herself at the mercy of the recipient’s generosity, even if she’d run all the way from the docks to Hightown. 

“—and after all that only three coppers in it!” Seesh threw herself back onto her cot, arm tossed across her brow. 

I murmured a sympathetic noise and fiddled with the hole in my sock. Washed without soap, they maintained the brownish colour of Lowtown dust. Back home I would have put them in the bin. 

A small stir went through the room and I looked up. Else, in her lovely blue dress, picked her away through the cots to her bed beside Talyn. I only knew it belonged to her by elimination. I’d never seen her use it. 

I looked to Talyn, trying to figure out the undercurrent of unease that had gone through the room, but she was watching Seesh. 

“Home early tonight, Else?” Outrage apparently forgotten, Seesh reclined on her cot and fixed her dark gaze upon the newcomer. 

Else shrugged. She hunched over her bag, rifling through the contents and pulling out a book. I twitched toward her. The book was cloth-bound in fading red with black letters down the spine. I squinted but couldn’t make out the title. 

In a determined voice, Talyn struck up a new conversation about a recent rash of muggings. Else opened her book to the first page with careful hands. 

What I’d taken for letters down the spine was a series of angular marks. I cocked my head to read them. They weren’t stylised letters, but runes. Engrossed, I didn’t immediately notice Else looking up from her book. 

“Oh—sorry,” I straightened, blood rushing to my face. 

“It’s fine,” her eyes creased with her smile, “I know how hard it is to find a book around here.” 

“I miss reading,” I said. And TV and movies and music. At this point, I’d probably do terrible things for five minutes with a waiting-room magazine. 

“So do I,” she said and patted her bed. 

I made my way over and sat next to her, noting Seesh’s interested gaze. 

“It was a gift,” she smoothed her fingers over the cover, tracing the runic marks. 

My heart dropped with sudden foreboding as she opened the book. Runes crossed the page. I flicked a page over. More runes. 

“I—” 

“Are you alright?” Else asked. 

“Can you read this?” My throat ached. 

“Yes,” she turned back to the title page and followed the print with her finger. ”The Adventures of the Black Fox.”

“Is this in another language?” I flicked through the pages. It might as well have been gibberish. 

“No,” she watched my face, eyes wide. “Do you know how to read?”

“No.” I guess I didn’t. But I spoke the language, so why couldn’t I read it? A little voice in my mind whispered _blood magic._

“Here, I’ll read it,” Else moved the book back to her lap. 

I nodded, not trusting my voice. 

 

If only I could magic myself some food. I crossed my arms over my chest, trying to tuck my fingers into the sleeves of my dress. It was early on my fifth morning in Kirkwall and the smog from the foundry had cast a pall over Lowtown. Without sunshine, it felt ten degrees cooler. Of course, I couldn’t check. No weather app and no forecast. It might rain today, but who knew!

I only had ten copper coins left so I skipped breakfast, despite feeling like a walking corpse. My dream of having a sensible job had been dashed with the revelation that I was totally illiterate, so I went with Talyn to beg for a job at every door. Most of them weren’t happy to hear from us. 

“Alright, alright, we’re leaving,” I said, backing away from an irate Marcher man who ran a laundry service out of a Lowtown hovel. 

“And don’t come back,” he whipped his rag at me, “we’ve no jobs for refugees!” 

In front of me Talyn ducked a cuff from an angry woman. We made it to the doorstep when another woman upended a basin of dirty water over our feet. In must have been the practice to empty them out the door, but her laughter said the timing wasn’t an accident. 

I sloshed through ankle deep water. Posing as a refugee had been incredibly convenient, with all the free stuff and the instant group of allies. But there were downsides—like, for example, the violent hatred. 

We walked back to the Bazaar in wet shoes. 

“Ugh,” I brushed dirt off my wet sock. On our walk from the Warehouse district to the Bazaar, my canvas shoes had crusted over with mud. “I’m starting to think you were right.”

Talyn, who hadn’t said anything—not a single complaint—since the altercation, seemed to grasp my meaning. 

“Yes,” she had the far off look of someone thinking hard. 

I waited, but whatever it was, she wasn’t ready to tell me. I left to get my meal of the day. 

Three coppers for a sweet pastry was a bargain. I lingered beside the steaming stall, inhaling the smell of cooked sugar like it might fill me up. I wanted a proper meaty meal, but I also wanted to stretch out my last coppers. More than that, I desperately missed sugar. Once past the terror of my first few days, I’d spent every waking minute thinking about food. Sugar was my first, second and third thought every morning. 

I caved and bought the pastry. On my way back to our spot, I cradled it in my hands, elbows out to protect the precious cargo. 

It was beautiful. The shiny, flaky pastry, the dark ooze of cooked fruit at the pinched edge—moments like this felt so real. This couldn’t be a dream or hallucination. I took a bite. 

Out the corner of my eye, I noticed Mari, Talyn’s beggar friend, lean over. I quelled the urge to offer her a bite like I might have offered a friend who took an interest in my food. There was no such expectation in Kirkwall. 

“Berries,” she said, her eyes closed, “cinnamon.”

I watched as she opened her eyes. 

“And a little lemon, if it were up to me,” the shadow of a smile passed over her face. 

I nodded, mouth full and feeling churlish. Her head tipped forward to meet her knees again. I’d never seen her raise her hands for coin like the other beggars. The breeze turned, and I shivered. In a world without a social security net would she die here? 

My empty stomach ached. I could have eaten ten more pastries and had room for dinner. 

 

At sunset, we made our way back to the boarding house in numbers. 

“Mari seems to know a fair amount about food,” I said to Talyn, in a lull in conversation. “Was she a cook, before Kirkwall?” 

“She spoke to you?” Talyn said, brightening more than she had all day. 

“Only a little,” I said, surprised by her reaction. 

“We were on the same ship from Highever,” Talyn said, “but she never speaks anymore. ” 

We walked a way in silence and Talyn went on. 

“Her son—they said he was blighted. Maybe he was. He didn’t make it to Kirkwall.”

“Oh?” A person could be blighted. Was she inferring that he died of blight? Or something else? 

“Wait,” she caught my sleeve, “we should go this way.” She gestured towards one of the serpentine alleyways. It was more like an accidental fissure in the towering buildings, formed by years of haphazard construction. 

“Are you crazy?” I missed my step as she pulled me in. “We’ll get mugged. Or stabbed. ”

At the mouth of the alley, our small group of refugees passed out of sight. Quiet pressed down on all sides. The passage was deserted, but that was hardly reassuring. 

“Not if there’s two of us,” Talyn said firmly, dropping my sleeve. “Besides, it’s quicker.” 

The leaning buildings hemmed us in, creating long cold shadows over the path. I clutched at Talyn’s sleeve.

After a tense five minutes of walking, the alley let out to a quiet square. I looked around, trying to orient myself between the Foundry and the distant mountains. Talyn had her hand at her hip, her eyes on a passing person. 

“We should go left, I think,” I said, then stopped. Talyn strode towards the passerby, quickening her step to a jog. “What are you—” 

She struck the other person—a young man, I could see now—between the shoulders with her fist. He crumpled. 

“Talyn!” my voice went high with fright. 

“Please, no.” He cringed away from her, scuffing his heels in the dirt. 

“What are you doing?” I hissed, though there was no way he couldn’t hear me. 

She didn’t answer, hands busy at his pockets. She withdrew a handful of copper, maybe ten pieces. Not much more than I had in my leggings. 

“You can’t do that,” I said, my heart in my throat. 

“Why not?” She poked a knife at the young man. “Any more?”

“No, no,” he cried, voice breaking, “that’s my last coin, please!”

“Let’s go,” she said to me, disappearing the coin into her belt. 

“That’s his last coin!” I grabbed her sleeve as she started walking away. She jerked it out of my grip. I looked back to where he lay in the dirt. Should I give him mine? My body pulled in both directions. I should give him the coin. But I might starve. But _he_ might starve. 

Talyn’s back was disappearing into the distance. I didn't want to navigate back to the boarding house alone. The boy sniffled in the dirt, each sob like an icy lance through my heart. 

In three jerky steps I went to him, fumbling under my skirt to get to my pocket. I dropped a scatter of coppers at his bowed head—half my brain screaming at me to stop. I whirled away before I could change my mind, jogging after Talyn. Why had I done that? I’d given him three of my seven coppers. The image of them scattered in the dirt seemed burned into my mind. 

How many meals did I have left? One? 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thanks for the comments and kudos! I treasure every one


	3. The Cheapest Ale in Kirkwall

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> CW: This chapter contains mentions of rape and significant discussion of sex work.

I clamped my jaw shut. If I opened my mouth I’d start yelling or crying and I wouldn’t be able to stop. 

Ten paces ahead of me, Talyn ducked through the door into the boarding house. I saw no difference in the set of her shoulder or the slouch of her stride. I thought there should be something, a tell, something to separate her normal self from the other Talyn, the one with a knife.

I started to pat down my pockets aimlessly, then realised I was reaching for my absent phone again. Ten years of habit was hard to break. I wanted to message Aggy— _holy fuck, this person I met turned out to be a knife-carrying lunatic_. I wanted a hot meal, no, a hot shower and a bowl of ice cream.

The relative warmth of the dormitory washed over me as I passed over the threshold. Several people looked up, but most didn’t, some already rolled up in blankets with arms thrown over their faces to sleep through the light of our precious candle stubs. 

Seesh interrupted her chatter to wave a quick greeting. A couple of others nodded hello. 

I went to my cot, Talyn’s eyes on me like a physical weight. I snuck a glance. She’d taken off her tunic and dressed down to her long shirt and patched socks like she always did. She was leaning back on her hands, watching me. 

I swallowed the lump in my throat and sat down, the thin pallet hardly giving under my weight. I wondered if anyone else could tell that I was at my wit's end. Maybe they didn’t care. It wasn’t like Kirkwall lacked mundane reasons to be unhappy—the pollution, the nonexistent job market, the _people_. I unwound my sandals.

I should tell someone what she’d done. Seesh, perhaps. Talyn could have hurt that guy. Might still hurt him, given how difficult it was to stay financially afloat in Lowtown. And she’d used me to do it rather than risk going alone. I tucked my shoes under the end of my bed, brushing the day’s dirt off my ankles. 

What would Talyn do if I told them? I thought of her knife, shooting her an involuntary look as I did. She was threading careful fingers through her long, dusty hair. From her serene expression, it might have been any other evening.

Would Seesh even care if I told her? Maybe she’d approve of a little extracurricular income. For that matter, would any of them believe me if I told them that Talyn—Talyn, who was kind to newcomers and always asked after everyone’s day—had threatened someone with a knife and taken their money?

I lay down in careful shifts of tired muscles. My back twinged and settled.

The two girls lying side by side in the next cot were making quiet conversation. 

“—said she’d write a letter for me—” one said, her voice ringing with the joy of a small victory. Her bedfellow whispered congratulations. The murmur of their voices seemed to crest over me like a wave of warmth. They were in their own world, soft-edged and lit by candlelight, far away from knives and betrayal. 

I definitely couldn’t trust Talyn, but raising a hue and cry as a newcomer was a bad idea. I should keep to myself. No more alleyway adventures, no more friends. I just needed a job. 

 

“See!” I pulled the hair elastic taught between two fingers again. ”It stretches!”

“Aye,” the merchant said, leaning away. “That’s a nice bit of string you have there.”

“It’s not a string,” I hissed, reaching it further over her display of worthless clutter. “It’s an elastic hair fastener. Nothing like it exists in this stupid city.”

“I’m sure,” she said. “Perhaps you ought to try your luck at Vincento’s?” 

I’d already tried Vincento. He said if he had to hear from me again he’d call the Guard. 

Mari twitched her head towards me as I returned to our usual spot. I thought for a moment of crouching beside her to save my skirt, but what the hell, the fabric was already thick with dust. I slumped beside her in the dirt. 

“You know, if I lived in a world which hadn’t invented elastic, I’d be all over it.” I pulled my tangled hair back into a ponytail and fastened it with the elastic. I’d taken out my loose braid in a hopeless bid to sell the elastic and my long hair had matted with grease and dirt. I tugged my fingers through the knots, but my heart wasn’t in it.

Mari’s eyes weighed on me but she didn’t reply. She probably thought I was mad. Honestly, it would be hard to argue with that assessment. 

I worried my fingers over the lump made by the four copper coins in my pocket. Perhaps the cotton t-shirt I was wearing would be more likely to sell. It was grimy with nearly a week of constant wear, but the even, machine-made weave might still be appealing. 

I scratched at the itchy crust of dirt on the back of my neck. I could wash the t-shirt this afternoon. And if it sold tomorrow, I could buy something to eat. After that—I didn’t know. A yawning void existed past Lirene’s deadline and my eviction from the boarding house. I couldn’t think of it. I buried it with all the other unthinkable things, like death and cancer and Aggy having no family left alive. 

 

After a fruitless morning of hassling small-business owners down at the docks, I took one of the wooden buckets from the boarding house and went to the well. My temples throbbed with a dull headache and the endless croaking of the Lowtown birds wore on my nerves. I had forgone food to save my last coppers and the seemingly endless walking was starting to take a toll. If I didn’t get food soon I would have to seriously moderate my activity. 

After drawing a bucketful, I sat on nearby steps and scrubbed the t-shirt against itself, taking care not to stretch the fabric out of shape. The scrub grew meditative. Watching the dirt bloom in the grey water was nearly as satisfying as washing myself might have been. The cawing of the birds, shrieks of beggar children and the ache of my empty stomach faded as I worked. 

So immersed, I startled when someone stopped in front of me. I slopped a small tidal wave of water down the steps, heart hammering until I recognised the pale blue sweep of Else’s skirt. 

“Sorry!” she said, biting back a smile. “I thought you saw me.”

“It’s alright,” I said, brushing the spray of water off my skirt before it soaked through. “I’m just jumpy.” 

She nodded and I pulled in my knees and elbows so she could sit beside me. 

“I thought you might want to hear more about Remi and Karolis.” She pulled up her dress in a foamy ruffle of blue skirt and white petticoat and retrieved her book from a separate fabric pocket tied around her waist. 

“Please.” This interlude promised to be the best part of my day, with very little competition. I’d also been wondering which parts, if any, of Remi’s story were real. The dreadful lord of Val Chevin? The country Orlais? I suspected Andraste was really worshipped. Since Else had read the name, I’d overheard it invoked and muttered and exclaimed in passing. A local deity, perhaps? 

Else began to read, her voice pleasant and even, pitched just for the two of us over the racket of Lowtown. Karolis, the bounty hunter, who had been outwitted by Remi at every turn, was having a crisis of faith over his loyalty to his noble employers. After a while, I let the t-shirt hang over the edge of the bucket. 

At the end of the chapter she paused and I stretched out my legs, surprised at how stiff they’d become. As my luck would have it, my stomach chose this exact moment to gurgle loudly. The audible complaint went on for a comically long time, long enough that I pressed my hand over my stomach to stifle it. I felt her gaze on the side of my face. Her pity, well-meant or not, would be awkward. I hoped she’d let it go. 

She turned a page and then closed the book. Damn. 

“No job yet?” 

“Not yet.” I took up the t-shirt, wringing out the little moisture that remained. 

“I—” she ducked her head, fingertips stroking the embossed leather cover. “I might have something.”

“What?” I turned to face her properly. “Really? What is it? I’ll do it.”

She laughed, but there was little humour in it. “Do you want to hear the catch?”

My heart sank. “Go on.”

“I was like you when I came to Kirkwall.” Her eyes returned to her lap. “I knew nothing and no one.”

I nodded, though a small, uncharitable part of me scoffed. Better a new country than a whole new world. 

“I hoped for a job in Hightown, in a shop, like the one I had back home. I was so angry when I couldn’t make it happen,” she worried at the rough edges of the leather. “But I found another way. I decided … well, if you know where to go you can find people, men mostly, who will pay ...” 

She looked at me in silent appeal. If my heart had sunk before, now it dropped through to the soles of my shoes. I nodded so she didn’t have to say it. I knew what she meant. Her unusual hours, Seesh’s sneering barbs—it made sense. 

“It has its benefits,” she said. “I make more money than any of them and if you find someone who really likes you, they’ll become regular visitors. Sometimes they even give gifts.” 

“Do you work in a—brothel?” I asked, stumbling over the word. 

“If only.” Her smile was small. “I make my own way.”

I nodded, my throat tight. 

“It would be nice to have company.” 

I'm sure it would. Like Talyn making me accomplice to her petty crime. Like the group of refugees who walked together from the Bazaar at dusk. Safety in numbers. 

“I need to think,” I stood and threw the damp shirt over my arm. She nodded, the shining curtain of her chestnut hair slipping over her shoulder and shielding her face from view. 

I should have said no there and then. I felt the shape of the refusal on the tip of my tongue, but some impulse kept my mouth closed. 

Sex work was an entirely logical option, I thought grimly, as I elbowed my way through the bustling crowd towards home. A visceral part of me recoiled to even think it, but I barely had life skills here, let alone employable skills. I had no contacts, references or friends to fall back on. All I had left was my physical labour and on that front, I was competing with every scrambling, desperate, poverty-stricken person in Kirkwall, local and refugee alike. Else had offered me a way to leverage the last resource I had for coin. 

But I baulked at it. 

The idea of sex with strangers, even unattractive ones, didn’t give me much pause. Well, it gave me _some _pause, but not enough that wouldn’t be soothed by copper and silver. No, it wasn’t that.__

____

____

I went to a museum when I was a teenager. The details of all the towering skeletons and unnerving taxidermy were lost to memory, but there was a human skull—male or female, I can’t remember—pitted and eroded like someone had poured acid over the crown. And that’s how I found out what untreated syphilis did to a person. I didn’t want to die like that. Or worse, live like that. I wanted that possibility to remain in the museum, locked safely in a glass cabinet, a distant horror to be shuddered over and shaken off. 

Becoming a sex worker without access to contraceptives or condoms? And failing those, without antibiotics and abortion? It would be like gambling with your life every day. 

And! I stomped up the steps to the boarding house. That didn’t even cover the clientele. Even if I spotted a telltale sign of venereal disease (and what were they? I longed for the barest glimpse at Wikipedia) I doubted I’d be given an opportunity to decline advances post-transaction and not instead be promptly raped and/or beaten to death. And, beyond that specific scenario, rape and assault would a be constant threat. Would the law enforcement here be inclined to help in that regard? I sincerely doubted it. 

I abandoned the bucket by the dormitory door and made a beeline for my cot.

What a cold tally of human suffering I’d made, safe in the four walls of my Lowtown shelter. I could list all these things like they were pros and cons to be measured, but they were all things that had happened and could still happen to any number of women, including Else. 

Now I wanted terribly to ask her if she was sure of what she was doing. But she’d been in Kirkwall longer than I had. How did I dare tell her which risks she ought to take in order to survive.

I pressed the damp t-shirt against my face and closed my eyes. I felt cheated. Somewhere, somehow, something had changed rules of the universe that I thought were immutable and I’d been yanked out of my tidy, sheltered life into this horrible place. It was a pointless, self-indulgent feeling, but I couldn’t escape it. This wasn’t fair. 

With a creak of an uneven floorboard, someone came into the room and I looked up. Ah, the last person I wanted to see.

Talyn wound through the maze of cots and dropped to the bed beside me. Not busy searching for work. Had she decided to conduct all her business after dark then? 

She leaned her arms on her knees and looked directly at me, mouth pursed like she was measuring her words. No pretence of indifference today. She didn’t have to, I realised, it was afternoon and we were alone. 

“What do you want?” I crossed my arms over my chest.

“You didn’t tell anyone what we did,” she said, finally. 

We? A transparent attempt to retroactively involve me in her bullshit. I didn’t have the energy to argue. 

“What does it matter?” I said. 

She shrugged. “Did you find any work today?”

A couple of days ago it would have been an innocuous question, an offer of commiseration. Now, I rather thought I knew where this was going and it wasn’t quite so welcome. 

“I’m not doing it again,” I said, my hands gripping opposite elbows. “And you shouldn’t either.”

“Why not?” She wasn’t confused, she didn’t even sound frustrated with me. She took a shaky breath in and I realised she was on the verge of tears. 

I looked at her and all my righteous, moral arguments felt like stones in my mouth. 

“What if—” my voice rasped and I cleared my throat. “What if the next person you threaten has a knife of their own?”

“What if I waste and die like a dog in the street?” she shot back.

I shook my head, trying to find the words. “I still won’t.” 

I could see she wanted to involve me for her own absolution, that she was far less resolute about her new career choice than she had seemed in the alley. But I sat here a week removed from supermarkets and takeaway fish and chips and she had fled a natural disaster into a refugee crisis. Despite my random appearance in Kirkwall, we still lived in different worlds. I doubted I could point a knife at anyone with any real threat. They’d probably laugh if I tried. 

She stood, so abruptly that her cot scraped several inches across the floor, and left. 

I trailed idle fingers over a growing hole in my blanket. I worried that my blithe dismissal of Else and Talyn’s offers was not a position that was going to last. Perhaps I should have told them both to ask me again next week. Thinking about the future made me want to lie down and cry. I stood before I could begin to rationalise a quick nap and cry and took one step when my vision went grey. 

I blinked and found myself lying on the floor, the shock of impact reverberating through my arms and knees. 

“Ow.” I took a deep breath and rolled over onto my back. My forearms must have broken the fall. Better that than my nose. I felt along my right wrist bone, sighing when I found a tender spot. That was going to bruise. Fainting was a symptom of the fasting, I guessed. Or the stress, overexertion and dehydration. 

Lightheadedness was an old friend and it was mildly amusing to imagine the grand fuss that would have happened if I'd fainted in the hospital—all the tests and the tutting and the recriminations. I couldn’t say I missed that, but right now a little fuss and an electrolyte drink might have been nice. 

I rolled over and got to my hands and knees. I held there, heart racing until the nausea passed and then I hauled myself up onto my cot, panting and sweating with the effort. 

 

When I felt steady, I collected some water from the square and gave the rest of my errands up as a loss. I waited for Else as night fell, curled up on my cot for the last time. She remained absent until even after all the candles were blown out. 

I slept poorly. Hunger sapped my strength and left a paradoxical, anxious energy in its place. Twice I woke with my jaw clenched so tightly my face ached and by morning every muscle in my body, from calves to bruised forearms, was stiff and aching. 

By the warm, yellow shafts of sunlight, I judged it mid-morning. Later than I’d intended but worth using the bed while I could. 

I’d gathered from chatter that Lirene, or her proxy, collected rent every week on the same evening—tonight, by all accounts. And barring Andraste herself descending from on high with handfuls of silver, I was well short. 

I looped the canvas ties of my shoes around my ankles with practised hands and stripped the blanket from my bed. The limited size of the blanket, one of this adventure’s many minor miseries, turned out to be a small mercy. I folded it into triangular halves and threw it over my shoulders in an unwieldy, ragged shawl. Peasant chic. 

I’d come full circle and was going back to Darktown, with all the others who couldn’t make rent in Lowtown. I wish I’d appreciated all four walls while I’d had them. 

I shuffled out the door, but only made it to the hall before I remembered. I’d wanted to talk to Else and give her my refusal in earnest. 

I turned to look back at the empty dormitory. Her bed was unruffled, blanket neatly tucked. That wasn’t unusual but her absence by mid-morning was odd. She usually came home in the early morning, while we were all leaving. Perhaps I’d slept through it. 

 

I went downstairs, hoping to find someone to ask after Else. The refugees scattered to all four corners of Kirkwall during the day, but there would be someone I recognised by the well or in the Bazaar. 

I heaved the wooden door open and squinted in the bright mid-morning sun. As if the weather had a sense of irony, it was a gloriously sunny day. As I made my way to the well, I pushed my way through the crowd to stay in the sun and avoid the long shade of Lowtown buildings. 

I hadn’t made it half-way when I glimpsed Seesh in profile, her dark hair its usual ruffled mess, exiting a store with a scribble of runic gibberish above the door. 

“Seesh!” 

She whipped around with one of her arms held protectively over her chest. Her shoulders relaxed when she spotted me. 

“Morning,” she said and we fell into stride, turning down the familiar, dusty path to the Bazaar. 

“Did you see Else this morning?” I asked, realising as I did that I’d found perhaps the single worst person to ask after Else’s welfare. I’d dismissed the animosity between the two as petty disagreement, an inevitable consequence of large groups of people and close quarters. But knowing what I did now about Else’s occupation I was less inclined to give Seesh’s hostility any benefit of the doubt. “Looks like she didn’t come in at all.” 

She looked at me so sharply it was almost a flinch. I stopped in my tracks. She took two steps past me and turned back, startled. The man behind me spat a curse and shouldered around me. 

“What is it?” I said, staggering out of the way of several others with evidently urgent business. 

“Oh, Maker’s mercy.” She took me by the arm and steered me aside, into a corner cluttered with empty barrels and shaded by a broken canvas awning that snapped and fluttered in the breeze. 

“Did something happen?” 

She snorted. “How dramatic. What do you want with her anyway?”

“I have—I said I’d speak with her about … something,” I said. Seesh raised her eyebrows with justified incredulity. “Nevermind, just tell me.” 

“Haven’t seen her, “ she said. When I looked unimpressed, she put a hand on her heart. “By Andraste, I haven’t seen her since yesterday.” 

I nodded, but I felt unsettled. Her words were reasonable and yet I couldn't dispel a sense of unease.

“Wait,” I said as Seesh made to leave. 

She rolled her eyes but turned back. “What?”

“Did anything happen yesterday when you saw her?” I pressed, the words tumbling over each other as I saw Seesh’s patience start to wane. “Did she seem odd? Did she say anything unusual?”

“Why do you care?” Seesh snapped, suddenly looking less impatient and more...furious. 

I froze with my mouth half-open. Even if Seesh hated Else, that was an overreaction. The cold slither of unease seemed to double itself. I wanted to reach out and take her by the arms as if touching her would coalesce this vague feeling into something real. 

“She’s not like us,” Seesh said, low and fervent. “You should stay away—”

“Oh, come on!” I said. “She’s exactly like us. What does it matter how she makes her money? We’re all in the same shitty, leaking boat.”

Seesh jerked back. I wasn’t sure she’d expected me to know the whole truth, but the surprise didn’t shake her conviction. “She’s not! She’s chosen not to be like us. And she knows that!”

I spluttered, wanting to yell three different things back and so blisteringly enraged I didn’t know where to start. 

“What do you mean, she knows that?” I said, after taking a measured breath. “How could you possibly know—”

“That’s why she hasn’t come back.” Seesh set her jaw. “Lirene won’t have her type in the house.” 

“She left?” All my anger drained away in the face of this new worry. “But she didn’t say anything about that yesterday.” 

Seesh stood with her fists clenched, pale with anger or fright, and watched me puzzle it out. Then, when it all came together, she lifted her chin in defiance. 

“You told them.” I said. 

“No,” she shook her head but didn’t break my gaze. “I made her an offer. Looks like she declined.” 

“Oh!” I laughed. “I see. You just promised your silence for a fee.” She didn’t deny it. “Where I come from that’s blackmail.” 

People in the crowd turned to gawk at our raised voices but didn’t stop. Just a run-of-the-mill domestic drama in Lowtown. Free entertainment, really. 

“I gave her a choice,” she shrugged, affecting nonchalance, but her fists were ready at her sides. “I have to pay the landlord just like everyone else.”

“You—” I choked on my rage. “You heartless bitch!” I wanted to throttle her. The homicidal urges must have shown on my face because she whirled around and fled. 

Where had Else gone after being threatened and forced out? Was she gone for good or biding her time? Had she gone to negotiate with Lirene directly? Had she found a better offer of accommodation? How could Seesh do that to another struggling person? And for that matter, how could Talyn? 

Else would be impossible to contact unless she came by the Boarding House to check in with me. But I’d hardly given her reason to do so yesterday. And, I realised, even as I agonised over her situation—we were in much the same boat. Tonight, I was equally homeless. 

 

I walked, unseeing and uncaring, through Lowtown. 

After some wandering, I passed through the market and doubled back to stroll through a street lined with food stalls. 

I considered each one carefully, lingering close enough to hear the spit and crackle of fatty meat on the fire. Then I dragged myself up the steps to the upper market where fresh food and dry goods were sold whole. The local cuisine clearly favoured root vegetables, but in a corner stall piled with sacks of nuts and seeds, I spied an eye-catching display of oranges. I hurried across and bent over them, inhaling the rich sweet tang of fresh citrus. 

“Move along,” suggested a large man, from behind the stall. He held a wooden cudgel loosely in one hand. I stepped back, my heel catching on the back of my dress, and held up my hands to show they were empty. He had a practised eye. I hadn’t started this walk with theft in mind, but with this banquet spread out in front of me, I was thinking of it now. 

I made my way reluctantly out of the market, turning back once or twice to check if he was watching me. 

What punishment would I receive if I got caught shoplifting? A fine? A hanging? 

A whole orange. My mouth watered. 

A tug on my hem startled me out of my thoughts. 

“Copper for the poor?” A man rasped, his pale face like a living skull.

“Let go.” I wrenched my skirt out of his weak grip. “Honestly. Do I look like I have any money?” 

He threw an arm up as if to deflect a blow and shuffled along to the next passerby. 

Guilt clawed at my throat. I swallowed down nausea and looked away. 

What was I supposed to do next? Something important. I had a plan

“Hey, kid,” I called to a child loitering by the thoroughfare. “Where can I get a drink? A really cheap drink? Like the cheapest drink, where’s that?” 

The child, who had tensed as I spoke, relaxed. “Hanged Man,” he said, stabbing one finger diagonally behind me. 

I looked at the alleyway he was pointing to. “Thanks.”

“Oi!” he shouted. “That costs, you know! A copper!”

“If I give you money how will I pay for a drink?” I called back. He cursed my mother as I walked away. Fair enough, I never liked her either.


	4. Fortune Favours the Desperate

Even at the height of midday, the alleyway was gloom and shadow. The only light filtered down through fluttering lines of washing. 

The path twisted and turned until my sense of direction threw up its hands in defeat, and narrowed until my elbows scraped against the sandstone, sullying the already filthy dress. After a meandering climb around a pile of rubble, I squeezed around a sharp turn and popped out into an identical Lowtown thoroughfare. 

I scanned the shop fronts for this promised oasis of cheap booze, the Hanged Man. As my luck would have it, the signs were all pointy runic nonsense and—a stylised figure tied up by his ankle. Right. 

I skipped across the street to the door underneath the eponymous hanged man. Such a thoughtful sign (I was so passionate about accessibility for the illiterate). And that was the last positive thing I could have told you about the place. 

As I opened the door, a warm waft of bitter beer and rank unwashed bodies slammed into my nose. I took an unwary breath and the smell curled into my mouth and pressed, thick and oddly humid, against the back of my throat. I choked and coughed into my elbow.

“Shut th’ door.” A man with patchy stubble lifted bleary eyes to glare at me. ”’s draughty.”

He wasn’t wrong. The inside of the tavern was warmer than the street. A large fire roared in a tall hearth and lit braziers hung from the high ceiling. 

I teetered in the open doorway. The wind swirled against my legs and my perpetually muddy hem slapped against my ankles. Without turning, I heaved the door closed.. 

A rough countertop was tucked into the left corner of the room, framed by barrels above, behind, beside. Behind this bar, a woman with a sulky expression slammed overflowing pitchers and frothing cups of ale into grasping hands. Relief flooded through me, an almost intoxicating rush that seemed to run from shoulders to numb toes. Sure, the decor was a little rough, but this was familiar. I’d tread this ground a thousand times. 

I made my way to the bar, only slowing to edge around a dark splatter of liquid I truly hoped was red wine. 

When the crowd in front of the bar thinned, the barwoman raised an eyebrow at me. 

I faltered. I didn’t think my regular _vodka-soda-lime_ was going to get me anywhere. Plus, it felt like years since I’d had a drink. When was the last time? I only had old memories: Friday night merlot, Sunday afternoon beers in the sun, all of them years and months distant. What was I doing last Sunday? I didn’t have the vaguest clue. 

“How much for one of those?” I asked, pointing down the bar where a man huddled over a mug of ale. He met my eyes as if they were a challenge. I jerked my gaze back to the barwoman. Don’t startle the local wildlife, dumbass. 

“Three coppers,” she said, but made no move to pour anything.

I nodded, fumbling with my hem and digging a hand into the long pocket that ran down my leg. I withdrew three of my last four coppers and set them on the bartop.

She filled a wooden tankard with ale and set it in front of me, slopping foam across the countertop. 

“Two coppers?” I tried to sound firm, but my voice quavered upwards. 

She looked at me, blank-faced, then picked up the mug. My fingers twitched towards her as if to snatch it back. Keeping her eyes on mine, she took a long draught, wiped the foam from her mouth and plonked it back in front of me. 

I peered into the cup. 

“Three coppers,” I conceded and pushed the mug back across the bar. It stuck and stuttered across the sticky surface. “May I have a fresh one? Um, please?”

She smirked suddenly, a bright expression that lit up her face, and poured another. I curled my hands around it as my three precious coppers were swept out of sight. Fuck. 

Ale in hand, I turned back to the common room to find a minefield of stirring interest and bold, curious eyes. I edged along the bar into the corner where it met the wall, unwilling to go further from the barwoman—now a steady and reliable figure. 

But whether it was my proximity to the bar or that upon a second look I was too bedraggled and downright dirty even for this crowd, I remained undisturbed. 

The beer was dauntingly dark, but the smell familiar. Was improperly brewed beer poisonous? All I could think of was grains-golden wheat and barley, a picturesque shower of them, like something from a beer commercial. 

I sipped it and gagged. It didn’t just have the bitter aftertaste I associated with beer, it had a bitter over-taste and a bitter in-between-taste. Tears sprung up in my eyes. My gag reflex and gnawing hunger fought like two dogs playing tug-of-war. I clamped my mouth shut and forced a swallow. 

The next sip came easier and the next easier still. 

I’d drained half of it when warmth stole over me like a nimbus of light. Muscles I hadn’t known were tense relaxed and I looked around the tavern with fresh eyes. 

Some optimistic soul had hung red banners on the wall for decoration. If I squinted I could almost see their vision. The warm, flickering light of candles and braziers gave the rough furnishings an almost rustic charm. 

A man approached the bar, wearing the tall boots I associated with dock workers. The barwoman sighed without the slightest subtlety, but he did not seem deterred. 

“How about a bite to eat, love?”

“Sure,” she said and then gestured to the door. “Take a left, two streets over Higham’s stall sells pies. Tasty, if you don’t mind pigeon.”

A meat pie. My mouth watered. I would have happily eaten pigeon, feathers and all if I had to. Beer made a poor substitute for a meal.

The man was as undeterred by these directions as he had been by her impatience. 

“Saving it all for the supper crowd, eh? I have coin as much as they do.” He rattled some of it, coppers from their flat stone sound, in one hand.

“For—“ the barwoman bit back her retort. “We’ve no food. For you or anyone else.”

“Cook ran off to join the Qun,” said a fair-haired man from behind the bar, holding an untapped barrel. “Kitchen’s empty.”

“The Qun?” The barwoman snorted, turning to the newcomer. “Does the Qun free you from gambling debts, then?”

The dock worker recoiled at this mention of the horned beasts, a sentiment I truly sympathised with. I hadn’t seen any Qunari yet and I had no wish to.

“What’s the point of a tavern with nothing to eat?” he said and made a point of knocking aside empty chairs as he left.

“I’m sick of arguing about food all day,” the barwoman said to her coworker. Neither of them were bothered by the racket. I followed the angry man’s progress all the way to the (slammed) door, flinching at every bump. “Why do they always take your word on it?” 

“You could try giving a reason instead of a smart remark,” he said mildly. 

She made a disgusted noise. 

My brain caught up, so slow I could feel the tail-end of opportunity slipping out of my grasp.

“Wait,” I blurted and startled when they both looked at me. “You need a cook?” 

“Let me guess,” said the barwoman. “You’re a cook! The best cook! Most famous stew in all of Ferelden!” 

Well, I could make spaghetti (given a jar of sauce) and a perfect poached egg (in a saucepan on a gas stove). How hard could it be? A stew was just bits of meat and bits of...other things. Vegetables. 

“I—” Just bluff! But I knew a cook. At least, I thought I did. And if I shuffled all the pieces around somehow this worked to my advantage. I sculled the last of my beer, ignoring the gurgling protest of my stomach and got up. “Give me ten—fifteen minutes.”

They watched me leave, one with vague curiosity and the other with a roll of her eyes. 

 

I recognised Mari’s bent figure and tangle of dark hair from across the square. I barged through a crowd of refugees and belatedly remembered I was avoiding Talyn. And Seesh. They weren’t among the crowd. Small blessings. 

“Mari!” I leant over, panting. She raised her eyes to me. 

“What do you want?” she said and nothing about her ragged figure had changed, but in that instant, she was as imperious as royalty. Suspicious of me and perhaps rightfully so. I’d leapt all the way to the happy ending with no consideration of the sticky business of persuasion in between. I sighed and pulled my skirt up to crouch beside her. 

“I do want something,” I looked into her eyes, vivid blue eyes a shade lighter than my own. “Something selfish. Something that I shouldn’t ask a friend, let alone a stranger.”

She raised her chin. Invitation or not, I took it. 

“I think I’ve found...” I hummed, measuring my words. “A job in a tavern. It requires”—a particular set of skills—“skills I don’t have. Skills you do have.”

Her face shuttered. She didn’t say anything but I felt the scoff in the tip of her head. 

“I’m not wrong, am I?” I could be wrong. Kinda walking a tightrope of hypotheticals here. “You know enough to cook for a tavern full of drunks. More than that, maybe.” 

Her bright blue eyes cut to me and I felt the question in them like the cold blade of knife. _Why? Why would I do that? My son is dead and so am I._

My skin crawled. I flicked my eyes away, back to the bustle of the market, to the noise of the crowd and the steady cawing of carrion birds. A laughing boy darted across the square with two lumbering men in pursuit; an innocent urchin or a pickpocket? I let out the breath I held and wrestled my mind back to the problem. I refused to accept that slow death of starvation or disease or exposure. For either of us. 

“I can’t imagine how it feels to lose a child.” I bit down hard on my lip. This was going to be presumptuous, unpleasant and downright rude. “When you were on that ship”—I saw the ship in my mind’s eye, saw the endless expanse of grey sea and sky and heard the flap of sailcloth—“you made plans for when you reached Kirkwall, didn’t you? Your son, he had a plan.” I named him in my mind—a solid, sensible name—Sam. Sam with a plan. I braced a hand in the dirt. “A plan I see you’ve given up.”

She reared at me, arms and legs lashing, clumsy. She stopped just short of my nose. Her eyes filled my vision, her pupils to mine. 

“I don’t want to die.” _Again_ , the thought whispered through my mind unbidden. “I don’t think you really want to die either. And I really, really need your help.” 

We stared at each other. She closed her eyes. 

“A butcher’s apprentice,” her voice was hoarse with disuse. “He would’ve got a job. They still eat meat here over the Waking Sea.” 

_I’m sorry_ couldn’t capture what I wanted to say. I was the worst person alive. I couldn’t speak. 

We sat for a long moment.

“I can’t promise I can do what you need,” she whispered. Agreement enough. 

“Let me convince them,” I said, the words tumbling out of me before she could change her mind. “You’re the cook and I’m your scullery maid. We split whatever they give, twice the work done for the same wage.” That had to be enough.

A grim smile twitched across her face. “My niece.”

I nodded, mute with guilt. That would work. 

 

I took her to the only well I knew. Her arm, balanced on top of my own, was more of an impression than a weight. 

She splashed water over her hands and face with the limited and clumsy movements of ninety-year-old, but the light scrubbing revealed only the fine wrinkles of someone much younger. Fifty-something? Less? 

I filled a discarded bucket and crouched against the wall. My murky reflection rippled over the surface. When it settled, I stared. 

My face was a study in shadow; deep purple eye bags like bruises, grey-hollow spaces under both cheekbones. My few freckles were indistinguishable under the smears and splatters of soot and mud. I scowled at myself. A shock of cold water seeping into my shoe disturbed this exercise in vanity. The bloody bucket was leaking. Of course it was. 

Harried now, I dashed water over my face, scrubbing at the tidelines of dirt at hairline and nape. I smoothed the bumps in my hair and raked fingers through the tangled pony-tail. 

Trying to clean up in this fashion was like pursing my lips and trying to blow out a bonfire. I felt disgusting and smelled worse. And now I had one wet foot. 

 

“Andraste give me strength,” said the barwoman, heaving an almighty sigh at the sight of us standing at her bar, scrubbed and smiling. Well, I had a fixed, perhaps somewhat manic, smile. Mari was busy giving the rowdy midday crowd a dubious look. 

“Hello again,” I said, trying to channel the unshakeable ego of the man who approached her earlier. “I’m Bea and this is my Aunt—” 

“I suppose you’re the cook,” the barwoman said, ignoring me and looking Mari up and down. “Tell me how to make bread, then.”

I grit my teeth. I promised Mari I’d convince these people to take us, but that’d lasted all of thirty seconds. Now I had to stand here and hope she could do it. 

“Leavened bread?” Mari asked. I cheered inwardly. That felt like a point to Mari. “Flour, water, salt”—her voice petered out and she cleared her throat—“ferment. A little ale and a dash of honey, if you’ve got it.”

But Cynical Barwoman was hard to please. Anyone could make bread, her expression seemed to say. 

“And what would you serve this lot all day?” she asked. “It’s hard to get much meat, mind, and they’d eat all day if they could.”

A pause. I tried to look at Mari out of the corner of my eye. Was she fazed by this question or just thinking?

“Oat mash for breakfast,” she said, sounding dreamy. “Easy to make, easy to keep warm. Stewed meat over bread for lunch and cold tart for supper—onion or egg.” 

The fair-haired barman, who had drawn closer to the three of us during this speech, now shot his companion a significant look. My heart leapt. 

“Hmm.” The barwoman narrowed her eyes and turned to me. “And what do you want?”

“I—I’m her niece,” I stammered. “She needs my help around the kitchen.”

The barwoman slanted a considering gaze towards Mari. 

“Room and board for the pair of us,” Mari said, sounding firmer. “We’ll split the wage.” 

The co-workers looked at one another. 

“I can do odd jobs too,” I said, in a rush. “Sweeping, carrying…” I’d forgotten every other chore in existence. Vacuuming? 

The pair turned towards each other, took several quick steps out of immediate earshot and broke out in violent whispers. Hands were thrown up, eyes were rolled, sighs were heaved. The moment strung out along a wire, endless. I was sure they were convinced and in the next second, sure that they were not. 

From the vicinity of my left shoulder, a new voice broke in. 

“Are you two having staff meetings without me again?” said a deep, pleasant voice, filled with amusement. “We talked about this, Norah.”

I turned to confront this complication.

A short man stood behind me. No, a dwarf. Short but not small, he was as broad as two of me. He wore a sturdy leather coat over a belted red and gold tunic, both of which gaped to show a veritable pelt of chest hair. 

I looked hastily away from the chest hair and up to his face. Light brown hair pulled back into a half-tail, golden stubble and an expression that said he knew I’d noticed the chest hair.

“For the last time, Varric,” said the barwoman—Norah. “You don’t get an opinion. You just live here.”

“An opinion? I would never!” He spread his hands wide in appeal. “Maybe some light observations, a little commentary...” 

“Ugh.” Norah turned away. 

The small crowd of people waiting at the bar started shouting their orders across the room. Norah and the barman exchanged a look and peeled off to see to it. They didn’t stop to tell us to leave. Or that we were hired. I planned to wait here until they did. 

“Looks like you’ve started a small riot,” The dwarf, Varric, leaned against the bar beside me. 

As if to punctuate this assertion, a cup sailed through the air and smashed against the back wall in a spectacular spray of pottery shards. No liquid though, cups were evidently running dry. 

“I started a riot?” I shuffled away from him, trying to gauge the level of accusation in his manner. “I did not. I hardly—” I couldn’t tell if he was teasing me or not. “Okay. That would be like if you picked an apple right before the tree fell down and then someone said ‘how dare you cut down that tree!’” 

He wasn’t deterred by this tangled comparison, if anything his smile broadened. “Surely it all depends on the manner in which one picks the apple?”

“Very polite picking.”

“And what kind of apples were you after? No, wait—” He rapped gloved fingers on the bar top, eyes narrowed. “What were you going to use them for?” 

I foundered for a moment. “Cooking them? Might be beyond the metaphor.” 

“That’s a shame.” He grinned. “Torturing metaphors is my sixth favourite pastime.” 

I laughed and surprised myself with how loud it was. Then I remembered what he’d asked, which cured my sudden outbreak of good humour. 

“I heard they needed a cook and I thought my aunt”—I gestured to where Mari was leaning against the bar—“and I could do the work.”

“Ah.” He nodded, gaze sliding away from me. “Well, I wouldn’t get too down about it. Any proposal that suggests Norah might have to do less work is bound to succeed.” 

Then he wandered off. I wished I could wander away from my situation. I wished I had a leather coat and watertight shoes. I followed the nice coat through the crowd and up the stairs in the back of the common room. If only he’d stayed to argue my case to Norah. He seemed like the kind of guy who could convince someone of anything—parting with their life savings over the phone, acquitting an accused murderer with a dubious mustache—that sort of thing. 

 

When the crowd cleared both the staff members were looking at me. I straightened like I’d been electrified. The beer had worn off and I had that Sunday-morning feeling—ravenous and nauseated.

“Clothes will come out of your first pay,” the barman said, as he came over. He raised his chin as if to withstand a forthcoming argument. 

I jerked my head in a robotic approximation of a nod. Mari twitched an eyelid in my direction. 

“And we’ll get rid of you both at the first sign of laziness.” Norah appeared at his side, hands on her hips. “The first sign!”

“Of course,” I said faintly. “We’re both extremely—” 

She cut me off with a _hmph_ and stalked back to the other end of the bar. I looked at the barman. I wanted to shout _mine now, no takebacks_ , I also didn’t want him to know I was crazy. 

“Where should we—do you want us to start now?” I said. 

“You can sleep in the kitchen,” he turned away. “Eat whatever is left over.” 

I took Mari’s arm and we followed him behind the bar. He ushered us through an open doorway, into a small room. I stopped and Mari bumped gently against my hip. 

“Well, it’s a bit of a mess,” he said, without meeting my eyes. “I’ll...just go see if I can get the food delivery started again.” He hastened away. 

A large stone hearth dominated one wall, surrounded by a mountain-range of ash. In the far corner, some environmentally-conscious person had started a compost heap. Dirty pots and dishes covered every surface—the table, the sideboard, even, I leaned to peer under the table, the floor. 

Well, if we cleared _that_ and stacked _those_ and threw out the empty barrels, we might be able to lie down back-to-back. 

Mari’s weight canted to one side. I grabbed her elbow and she sagged against me, pale and vacant. With my free hand, I upended a pot from the single chair and guided her into it. 

“Are you alright? Mari!”

No response. She listed to one side and I propped her straight against the back of the chair. 

Pupil size? Normal. Normal-ish? Was pupil size relevant? I waved my hand in front of staring eyes and got no response. I poked fingers at her neck, fumbling over loose skin and bouncy tendon-things. A pulse! 

She lifted her hand to bat me away but missed. I withdrew, hands still floating as if I could pat her back together. 

She needed food, water, rest, a bath and to not be in Kirkwall. I turned back to the mess of a kitchen. I could fix one or two of those things. Somewhere in this chaos, there had to be something edible.

I foraged through the dishes, fingers slipping in rancid grease and unidentifiable sludge. A bone! I twisted it at arm's length. Nearly black with age. I tossed it towards the compost heap. So much food—a green-ish pie-crust crumbled into pure mould as I touched it—and none of it worth eating.

I went to the sideboard, which creaked open to reveal a pantry. A bare pantry. Empty jars rolled on dusty shelves and limp hessian sacks spilled onto the floor. 

I ran my hands through the sacks, hoping and praying. Nothing, nothing, nothing. Lumps! Potatoes, that had to be potatoes. Fries. Mash. Hot fritters straight out of the pan. I yanked the sack open and coughed at the cloud of sediment. 

Oh. Turnips. 


End file.
